Campaign-Fund Committees: Discontinue Florida CCEs

Campaign-finance rules are supposed to create a level playing field and protect the political system from the appearance of corruption.

Campaign-finance rules are supposed to create a level playing field and protect the political system from the appearance of corruption.

But loopholes are abundant. In part, that is because the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed authority to restrict donations and expenditures. But state policies also play a role, and Florida's are especially weak in some regards.

Through setups called committees of continuous existence, top Florida lawmakers and their deep-pocketed benefactors enjoy great leeway to receive as well as spend certain donations. No such access is granted to individual voters — the little guys.

The CCEs allow nearly unlimited fund-raising for influential legislative leaders. The committees are composed of donations and "dues" from groups and businesses that may want to curry favor — or receive one — from a powerful lawmaker.

At best, the CCE situation looks bad. At worst, it's a recipe for influence-peddling.

Committees of continuous existence should be outlawed as one of several state campaign-finance reforms. There should be no illusion, however, that these steps would restore faith in the political system.

The history of campaign-funding restrictions shows that they complicate but do not slow the flow of money, which gets rerouted to committees for which funding is harder to track.

DEEPEN DISCLOSURE

This reality has driven a reform group, Integrity Florida, to propose tougher disclosure requirements for political contributions and expenditures, as well as a better tracking system that would give the public an easy way to quickly access campaign-finance data. The organization wants legislators to eliminate committees of continuous existence and discard caps — set at $500 — on political contributions.

New state House Speaker Will Weatherford has indicated support for such changes. Whether the rest of the Legislature is on board remains to be seen.

Requirements for greater transparency are important. No matter where political money originates, the public should be able to readily find — on a daily basis — who has donated what to which politician, if not why.

That is far from the case today. Data can lag, and money funneled through political-action committees — whose names often bear no resemblance to their causes — can be especially difficult to trace. It can take enormous time, a phalanx of investigators and sheer guesswork to follow the money.